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IRIS

Instructional & Research Information Systems

Lars Rohrbach

Network Disruption

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From about the time of the routing changes this morning in Soda, some systems have had trouble with NFS mounting of partitions from coeus and project. The problem appears to be isolated to specific systems. The problem does not affect all systems moved to a new router this morning. The problem does not appear to be reproducible on all systems on any specific network.

At least one affected client machine seems to be fixed after a reboot.

Staff are continuing to investigate this issue.

Resolved as of 2007-08-23 17:40:00

Lenovo Battery Recall

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Lenovo issued a recall of certain batteries shipped with some Thinkpads between November 2005 and February 2007, notably including the T60.

More information is posted on the [Lenovo web site][1].

[1]: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=BATT-LENOVO

Some details from that page:

On March 1, 2007, Lenovo voluntarily recalled approximately 205,000 9-cell lithium-ion batteries. These batteries were manufactured for use withThinkPad notebook computers that shipped worldwide between November 2005 and February 2007.

Lenovo sold the batteries with new notebook computers or as optional or replacement batteries on the models listed below.

* ThinkPad R60 and R60e Series
* ThinkPad T60 and T60p Series
* ThinkPad Z60m, Z61e, Z61m, and Z61p Series

These models may have shipped with either 6-cell or 9-cell batteries; only the 9-cell batteries with the part number FRU P/N **92P1131** are being recalled.

[See the above website for instructions on verifying the part number of your battery.]

Until a replacement for a recalled battery arrives, if you intend to transport your ThinkPad notebook PC or use it in a manner that may subject it to a strong external impact, you should turn off the system, remove the battery, and only power your ThinkPad by plugging in the AC adapter and power cord.

Microsoft Vista Support in EECS

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Microsoft has released Windows Vista to the public, but Vista will not be officially supported within the EECS department until such time as we can overcome certain licensing and technical issues.

The EECS department purchases the Windows OS and other Microsoft applications as a volume-based purchase from academic reseller TRC (now CDW-G). While we have complete OS images for other versions of Windows, our participation in the Microsoft Consolidated Campus Agreement at this time may only provide us with upgrade versions of Vista Business. To comply with our current licensing structure, a CIF-paying user would have to upgrade to Vista from a volume-licensed version of XP which has undergone Microsoft Validation. This also prevents us from offering network installation of Vista via Windows Deployment Services (WDS).

Perhaps more importantly, Vista Business edition is currently unable to mount Windows shares from our network fileservers coeus and project, meaning that Vista clients will for now be unable to mount one’s home directory or project space. IRIS staff will be working with Microsoft and Network Appliance as needed to see resolution to this issue. It is worth noting that Windows XP was not supported within EECS and had similar incompatibilities with our NetApp fileservers until XP Service Pack 1 was released.

IRIS will not be providing Vista via download or Helpdesk loan until it is ready to be officially supported within EECS. Those who have their own copy of Vista are free to use it at their own risk; we may not be able to provide direct assistance if any problems are encountered.
[Read more…] about Microsoft Vista Support in EECS

EESWW Server Maintenance, Nov 2 2006

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The EESWW server, cad.eecs, provides /usr/eesww fileservice to Unix/Linux machines (primarily Solaris machines) throughout the department. EESWW includes tools such as cadence and hspice.

cad.eecs will be offline for maintenance on Thursday, Nov 2nd, from about 9am until noon. We will be replacing a failing disk, and upgrading the operating system.

Unix SWW down

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The unix/linux Software Warehouse fileserver sww.eecs suffered a power supply failure shortly after midnight last night, making /usr/sww unavailable for all clients which mount it.

As of about 12:45pm, all sww.eecs services have been restored, and clients which mount /usr/sww should be working as normal.